Authoritative Practices and Collective Validation: Wikidata within the Collaborative Digital Edition of the Greek Anthology

Maxime Guénette

Université de Montréal

Mathilde Verstraete

Université de Montréal

May 6, 2025

Introduction

Wikidata as an open infrastructure for DH knowledge representation
A decentralisation of authority

How, then, can expert-led projects work with a generalist platform such as Wikidata to generate new forms of knowledge?

How do these hybrid models — which combine scholarly expertise with public participation — challenge traditional boundaries between academic and amateur contributors, and between knowledge production and validation?

Overview

Wikidata as infrastructure in Digital Humanities
Case Study: Anthologia Graeca — corpus, platforms, data model (uses of Wikidata)
Focus: Representing the authors of the Greek Anthology through Wikidata
Some thoughts on authority and collective intelligence : digital infrastructures challenging and extending traditional scholarly practices.

Wikidata and Digital Humanities

Wikidata is a major knowledge graph for structuring and sharing data
DH projects use it to publish Linked Open Data without technical barriers
GLAM institutions rely on it for metadata curation and interoperability

Wikidata as A Linking Hub

Authority on Digital Platforms

A collaborative and digital edition of the Greek Anthology : https://anthologiagraeca.org/

Led by the Canada Research Chair on Digital Textualities
Funded by the SSHRC ;
- Insight Development (2017-2019)
- Insight (2019-2025)
- 2 Connections (2022, 2024)
Large and diverse team :
- Researchers : M. Vitali-Rosati, E. Bouchard, C. Raschle
- Coordinators : M. Verstraete, W. Bouchard
- Developers : D. Larlet, S. Rubio, É. Guicherd
- Editors & contributors from UdeM (Research assistants), Naples (University Students), Bari (High School students)…
- Institutional partners: CRIHN, Perseus, Perseids, Heidelberg Library, etc.

Project’s corpus

Ancient Greek epigrams (6th c. BCE – 10th c. CE)
- 15 centuries of literary production
Evolving corpus based on successive compilations
Core manuscripts:
- Palatine Anthology (Heidelbergensis Pal. gr. 23, 10th c.)
- +
- Appendix Planudea (Marcianus gr. 481, 1299)
- =
- Greek Anthology
4,134 epigrams by 311 authors

Project’s goals

A hub for the Greek Anthology : Manuscript, Texts Translations, Keywords, Commentaries, Internal and External References, …

An Open-source platform : https://anthologiagraeca.org/

An API : https://anthologiagraeca.org/api/

A few words on the previous platforms

1️⃣ SPIP prototype → indexing, first technical/epistemic tests
2️⃣ Anthologia Palatina → contributor-facing platform
3️⃣ Anthologia Graeca → full corpus, multilingual support, LOD + open API

Experimentation is part of the project

The platform’s keywords

CSV :

Author’s ID on our platform
Wikidata’s ID & URL
TLG’s ID & URL
Languages (latin, french, english, italian, ancient greek)
Action (Nothing, Delete, Create) to do on our platform

Some comments on the outcome and future work

Authors : Go further ? (floruit ?)

Cities : work in progress

✅ Coordinates
❌ Names in different languages

Other keywords : work in progress

Do we want to reconcile everything ?
- E.g. : “personification of weapons” (https://anthologiagraeca.org/keywords/204/)?

Conclusion

Wikidata redefines academic authority through shared, community-driven knowledge.
It challenges scholars to balance openness with academic standards.
It surfaces tensions around validation and authorship in collaborative research.